6. 2
“Okay. So, the first trial, I didn’t even know was a trial,” I start. Levi looks confused, and I laugh. “I’m serious. The archangel gave me coordinates. I ended up in the Judean desert. I don’t know how long I was there for. Felt like an eternity, but I just wandered around, trying to find the location of the trials. I had packed water and food, but not nearly enough. If I wasn’t half demon, I wouldn’t have survived.”
“40 days,” Levi says, and I look at him, confused. “You were there for 40 days. After Jesus was baptized, he got lost in the Judean desert for 40 days, being tempted by the devil.”
“I wasn’t tempted,” I say, but I suppose that was the root of the trial. I hadn’t thought about it that way.
“How did you find your way out?” he asks.
“Well, during the time that I was lost and wondering, I ran across animals here and there. That’s how I got some of the marks, but I survived them. It was running out of food and water that almost led to my demise.” I say, memories flashing in my mind of the caracal that attacked me. I only had a rock and a stick to fend it off with.
“Why didn’t you just… leave? ”
“I was determined to find the trials. I was determined to no longer be a soulless demon. I wanted to be someone that was worthy of touching you.” I reach out but pause an inch away from Levi’s cheek. I’m still not worthy of touching him. He makes the decision for me, though. He leans into me, my fingers grazing his skin.
“You didn’t…” Levi starts, but I cut him off. I don't want him to lie to me, say I didn’t have to do it. I did. He would have never been able to accept me otherwise.
“Anyway, I was on death's door. I was sunburnt and injured from various animal attacks. I knew I was going to die soon. The thirst… I can’t even describe it to you. My throat was so dry. The hunger was nothing compared to the thirst. I had passed out, finally giving in to the sun. I prayed you were asleep so I could see you one last time. Tell you that I tried and that I didn’t want to leave you like this.” My voice cracks as I hold back my tears. The thought of never seeing Levi again. The hopelessness I had in that moment.
“Oh my god, that sounds… terrifying. How are you still here?” Levi’s voice is thick with concern and tears. Sunlight filters through the st ained-glass windows, washing over our naked bodies and catching on the unshed tears in his eyes. It’s like looking at the aurora borealis in a clear daytime sky.
“I don’t remember what exactly happened. I just woke up in a tent with this lady giving me sips of water. Her name was Miriam. She was part of a colony, like a village, that made a home in the desert.”
“Oh wow. They just lived in the desert?” Levi asks, and I nod.
“Yeah. Miriam showed me a kindness that I had never seen. She reminded me a lot of my own mom. She nursed me back to health and offered me food and water. She helped me clean up and shave. After a few days with them, I left. I told them I needed to move on with my quest.”
“Did you find it?” Levi is clearly invested now, eyes following my every move.
“Yeah. The very same day, I found an oasis. At first, I was going to keep it all to myself. It was a paradise. But then I remembered Miriam’s kindness, and I asked myself “What would Levi do?””
“You did not,” he laughs, pushing me slightly .
“I did so. I asked myself what you would do, and the answer was obvious. I found my way back to Miriam and her colony. I told them what I had found and led them back to the oasis.” I recall the look on Miriam’s face when she saw the green plant-life, fed by water. She was so thankful. I had genuinely felt so good about myself.
“Then what happened?”
“That night, when everyone was asleep, I heard your voice. I thought I was visiting you in a dream, so I followed the sound. Your voice led me to a cave that wasn’t there before. When I entered the cave, I kept following your voice, through tunnels and passageways. Eventually, I came to this large opening, and there you were, standing in the middle, smiling at me with a beam of moonlight shining directly down on you.”
“That wasn’t me.” Levi’s voice breaks me out of the memory, and the spirit I was seeing from the trial fades away, the real image of Levi replacing it.
“I know. But I was exhausted. I hadn’t eaten or drank nearly enough, and I missed you. I had been sleeping a lot just so I could see you, find some happiness in such horrible conditions. You were as good as real in that moment.” I look at him, brushing a piece of hair from his eyes.
“Oh,” is all Levi says, looking away clearly unsure of how to respond. I find myself smiling. The spirit of Levi could never replace the real thing, and fuck did I miss him so damn much. “So… I was standing in the middle of a cave.”
“Yes. I rushed to you, but you stepped back. You wouldn’t let me touch you. You were saying all of these sexy things, and then you started to take off your clothes.”
“That doesn’t sound like me at all.” Levi scrunches his nose up.
“I know… that should have been my first clue.”
“Hey!” Levi smacks me, and I laugh.
“Okay, okay… so you were saying all of these sexy things, and started to take your clothes off. I asked if I could touch you, and you said ‘no’, so I didn’t. I asked if I could kiss you, and you said ‘no’, so I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you? I mean… my consent had never stopped you before,” Levi says, and I wince. That hurt more than the trials ever did.
“I know… but like I said, I was trying to be the person that you deserved. You didn’t deserve to ha ve your consent ignored. I wanted to do right by you, and I truly thought this was you. So… when you said ‘no’, I listened. I just watched, and waited, hoping you would give me permission to do something, anything. It was torture. Every time I asked, you would giggle and say ‘no’.” My spent cock twitches at the memory. The spirit of Levi touching himself. Smiling at me. Saying how much he missed me. Everything I ever wanted to hear.
“How long did this last?” Levi asks, clearly skeptical. I don't blame him for being skeptical. Levi was right. I never worried about his consent before, and the very memory makes my heart ache. I need Levi to understand that I will never take that away from him again.
“All night. All night long, I watched you pleasure yourself. I kept asking, you kept saying ‘no’, so I fisted my hands and just watched. I didn’t want to take that away from you.” I clench my fists, getting lost in the memory.
“Stay with me.” Levi's voice breaks into my subconscious. Levi, the real Levi, comes back into focus, and he’s smiling at me, holding my hand tightly. I squeeze back .
“After the sun came up, you handed me a sword and said ‘you’re going to need this’ then you kissed me on my cheek and disappeared. In the back of my mind, I think I was slowly starting to catch on that I was in the trials, but I was so tired and beaten at that point, my mind wasn’t working right.” I shake my head, trying to clear the fog.
“Understandable.” Levi squeezes my hand again, and the gesture is so comforting I could cry.
“So… I was confused. After all of that, you gave me a sword and left. When you left, everything was dark. There was no more opening at the top of the cave. I decided to try to find my way out of the cave. I took the sword and stumbled through more passages. It was pitch black; I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face.”
“That must have been terrifying,” Levi says, eyes empathetic. I nod, trying not to think about the way my mostly naked body scraped over the rocks of the cave every time I stumbled. The way my nails were ripped off and bloody from continuously searching for purchase in the dark.
“Eventually, I ended up in another large opening. I could see an exit leading to the outside, so I started for it, but something in the corner caught my attention.”
“What was it?”
“It was a woman in a white dress. She was just laying there. I thought maybe she was dead or injured. As I got closer, I realized it was my mom. She was chained by her ankle to the wall of the cave.”
“Another apparition?” Levi asks, his free hand over his mouth.
“No. I don’t know how, but I could tell she was real. I ran to her and pulled her into my arms, searching for blood, bruises, anything to show she was hurt. I found nothing. During my search, she woke up. She looked confused. Asked me where she was and how she got there. Said she had been worried about me. That she thought maybe you had killed me, and she never wanted that. She started crying, clinging to me.”
“I’m glad she was okay,” Levi says, and he sounds like he genuinely means it.
“Me too… but as I was trying to figure out how to get her unchained, we heard something coming down the passageway I just came from. It sounded… menacing. Heavy steps shook the cave . Growls came every couple of minutes. I knew whatever it was, it was going to be bad. When I realized there was no way to remove the chain, I tried to break it using my sword, but it didn’t budge.” My heart races as if I’m in that cave, the panic starting to take me over.
“Easy,” Levi says, gripping my hand again. It pulls me back a bit, but I still feel lost in the memory.
“Each step the beast took felt like it was ticking down to our demise.”
“Shit.” Levi’s eyes are wide, and he sounds genuinely terrified.
“When it started to round the corner, Mom told me to leave her. She started pushing me toward the exit. I refused. I couldn’t leave her there. She took care of me. She gave me life. She nurtured me in the best way she knew how. She brought you to me.” I cup Levi’s cheek. “I owed her everything. At the very least, I knew I had to protect her.”
“Oh, Killian.” Tears swim in Levi's blue eyes as he looks at me in awe.
“So... I fought. I used my sword, and I fought the beast.” Flashes of the giant monster filter through my mind. The way its growl had shaken the entire cave, causing rocks to fall. How it almost took my head off with its huge claws. Its large yellow teeth had glimmered in the low light, dripping with drool. Its amber eyes peered at me with hatred I thought at best was incapable of feeling.
“I stayed between it and her as much as I could. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to kill it or incapacitate it, but it was definitely trying to kill us. At one point, it hit her, knocking her out.”
“Oh no,” Levi gasps, gripping my hand tightly.
“I saw red. She didn’t deserve this. She shouldn’t have been brought into the trials in the first place. She was innocent. So, I fought harder, eventually shoving the sword through the beast’s heart and twisting it. It fell hard. The cave shook around us. Huge rocks rained down on us, so I dove on top of her body, shielding it from the brunt force of the rocks.”
“But… but how did you …” Tears stream down Levi’s face as he searches my body, touching the bruises and cuts, clearly understanding how I got them.
“I don’t know. I survived, though. After the dust settled, Mom was still unconscious. I tried to wake her, but she wasn’t waking up. I could tell she was still breathing, though. I could hear her heart beating. I knew she was alive, but I didn’t know for how much longer. Didn’t know how hard she was hit, and I still couldn’t get her loose. Finally, I just lost it. I started screaming at God.” I use the pad of my thumb to wipe the tears away from Levi’s cheeks.
“Why?” he asks, and I stop myself from rolling my eyes.
“Because he did this. It was his trial. I passed all three, so he owed me. He was just going to let my mother die to prove a point, so I started screaming at him. Told him he was a coward. That he had to give me what’s mine, and that was the rule, or else Lucifer would start a war.”
“A war?”
“Yeah. There are rules in place for a reason. If God keeps a soul that is no longer His, it is grounds for a holy war. Of course, God is a little bitch and wanted to avoid that, so he came. He eventually gave me my soul back, which I think is what you saw in your dream.” I touch Levi’s temple .
“Okay… but how did you get here so quickly?” Levi asks.
“After I got my soul back, God was going to leave. I stopped him and told him he needed to help my mom. That she was hurt because of him, and she was innocent, and she needed to be fixed. He begrudgingly agreed. I watched her head wound heal, and the chain disappear from around her ankle. I grabbed her hand, right as he was transporting her, so he ended up transporting both of us to her house.”
“You didn’t take her to the hospital?” Concern coats Levi’s question, and I definitely am in love with him.
“No need. Her head wound was healed. She woke up as I was carrying her to her bed. I tucked her in, and explained everything as quickly as I could. She said she was glad to have me back and told me to go to you. Even told me to take her car, so I did. I left. And I came here.”
“Okay…” Levi says after a few seconds, nodding. He places his hand over my heart, and it stutters in my chest, almost as if it is reaching to touch his hand. I wince, the adrenaline from the morning we aring off, leaving my broken body sore. “So why didn’t the devil have your soul?”
“The devil?” I would laugh if I wasn’t so damn sore. Levi looks puzzled by my response. “The human part of me was pure enough to be with God, so he was the one that had my soul. That’s why I had to trap an angel to begin with. If the Devil had my soul, I could have just, like… asked him.”
“I-I guess I’m just having a hard time believing that it was God. The voice in my dream. It belonged to God.” Levi looks as if he’s on the brink of losing it. I know I need to be gentle, but I also want to make him understand that God isn’t who he thinks he is.
“You don’t have to believe me but understand that I have no reason to lie to you. I will never lie to you again. That was God’s voice in your dream.” I look Levi in the eyes, unblinking, wanting him to truly see that I’m not lying about this.
“He sounded so… different.” He looks down, fiddling with a strand of my hair.
“What?” It’s my turn to be confused.
“When he visited me in my dreams, he always sounded so kind.” Levi raises his head, and I swipe the hair out of his eyes. “But in this one, he was so menacing. He sounded… evil.” He looks as if his world is falling down around him again. And now that I have a soul, I can recognize that it is. I pull Levi to me, hugging him tightly.
“God is… whatever he thinks will serve him in that moment,” I say finally, petting Levi's hair in comfort. I brace myself for him to pull away from me again, angry that I would talk in such a way about God, but what I said was true. The sooner he realizes that, the better. But he never pulls away, never moves to get up. He just traces the cuts and bruises on my chest so gently, it feels like I’m being touched by a feather from the wing of an angel.
“So… after you left, you talked to your father, trapped an archangel, completed three trials, and met God all because I said you didn’t have a soul, and that I was ashamed because I liked your touch?” Levi taps my collar bone, as if checking off each thing I did.
“Yes.”
“Wow… that’s…”
“Obsessive? ”
“Romantic.”
“Levi…” I take a deep breath. I close my eyes, unsure how to say this. It could ruin everything, the bubble we have created around us popping as soon as I say it, but my damn soul is forcing me to. “You need to know that I’m still tainted.”
“What?” Levi asks, looking up and eyes locking with me.
I lick my lips, attempting another deep breath even though my ribs hate the very idea. I rub Levi’s back, needing some sort of grounding. “I’m still tainted. Yes, the soul I had was pure enough to go to heaven, but when it was put back into me, it mixed with my darkness. I’m still half demon. I’m still tainted. I don’t know if I deserve touching your immaculate body, but I want to. I want to, with permission. I know I may taint you… I probably already have…”
“Killian. Stop,” Levi interrupts, touching a single finger to my lips. When I stop talking, he moves, touching a petal from the flower crown still perched on my head. “It doesn't matter.”
“Yes, it does,” I start to protest, but he cuts me off.
“Sometimes you have to touch white clothes with ink. That’s how words and art are produced. You would never have an inspirational painting unless someone was willing to dirty up the blank canvas,” Levi says, looking into my eyes, a slight smile quirking his lips up.
“So, you’re okay with this?” I am almost afraid to ask. Still terrified of the answer. I went through everything to change for Levi. I don't know how I will handle it if Levi doesn't want me in return. I wouldn’t allow myself to even consider it until this very moment.
“God doesn’t want me anymore.” Levi's eyes are cast down, the words coated in sadness, and the balloon in my chest deflates. I grab his face in both hands, forcing him to look at me.
“God doesn’t deserve you.” I stroke his cheeks with my thumb, swiping away a stray tear.
“I thought it was me that didn’t deserve Him,” Levi whispers, searching my eyes for something that I hope he finds.
“Fuck God. I want you. Can that be enough?” I ask, holding my breath for an answer.
“Yes. Yes. It can be enough.” Levi leans in, kissing me tenderly. I can taste the saltiness of the tears on his lips, and I silently vow to never let him cry over God again. I will never let God hurt him in such a way.
“What do you say we get out of here before your congregation comes and catches us in a less than holy position?” I ask, smiling down at Levi.
“I thought you would love that, eat it up,” he responds, smiling back at me.
“I’m a little sore, but I’m definitely willing to put on a show.” I wink, tickling his ribs. He shouts, grabbing my hand with a laugh.
“Nah. I think that’s enough blasphemy for one Easter,” Levi says, but there is still laughter in his voice, and God, does he look gorgeous. His laugh and smile are curing every ailment in my body.
“You don’t know the meaning of the word.” I lean in to bite his neck.
“I’m sure you’re willing to teach me,” Levi says, his giggle making my teeth vibrate. He makes no move to push me off, and I could get used to this. A naked, giggly Levi beside me. Tasting his tan skin any time I want. Kissing his perfect lips. Touching his immaculate body. Any. Time. I. Want.
“For the rest of our lives,” I whisper into his ear, kissing the tip. He shivers. “If you’ll have me that long.” I pull away, looking Levi in the eye as I say it. I want Levi to understand that I mean every word. That I want this. For the long haul.
“You’re, like… obsessed with me. I don’t think I’ll ever be rid of you,” Levi laughs, rolling his eyes.
“Now you’re getting it.” I nip Levi’s neck again, unable to get enough of his taste. I plan to feast on him for the rest of our lives.
“Come on, my congregation could show up any minute now,” Levi says, and he almost sounds regretful.
“Yeah. My body is starting to really hurt.” I wince, grabbing my ribs when I try to move too quickly.
“Oh… fuck… we need to get you to a hospital.” Levi looks so concerned. It’s sweet, and I don't know what I did to deserve this man. Maybe demons don’t need God’s favor to get what they want. Maybe they just need a little luck and seduction.
“No need. Just need to get some rest.” I put up a hand to placate Levi. He nods, helping me stand up. The remaining pieces of the splintered cross creak under our bare feet. We carefully kick the pieces to the side, not wanting to get splinters of wood in our feet.
I look around. The front of the church looks like an apocalypse has taken place. The cross is broken around us. The altar is a mess, bread and wine all over the floor around it. Flowers are scattered among the damage, pure white petals sitting atop wreckage. The Bible is in front of the altar, laying face down, opened on bent pages.
“Oh shit…” I look down at the rosary swinging between us. “I got come on your cross.” I had forgotten it was there. I’m surprised it didn’t break in the mayhem. Levi burst out laughing, and I would join in, but I’m too afraid my ribs will murder me.
“It’s fine. I don’t need crosses anyway,” Levi takes it off of us and sits it on the destroyed communion table for someone else to find. He puts his pants and undershirt on, leaving the robe crumbled on the floor. Then he helps me get dressed. He’s so gentle, as he tenderly pulls the material of the shirt up my arms and buttons it back up. He even puts my shoes back on my feet as I sit on a pew.
“Are you ready?” I ask as we stand in front of huge doors to the church. We both know that I’m asking a different question entirely. Levi looks at the door, and I wish I could read his mind.
“Yeah. I’m ready.” Levi nods once, then grabs the door handle, pulling it open. The newly risen sun is so bright, it blinds us for a couple seconds. We both blink, trying to get our eyes to adjust. I look down, spotting something in front of the door.
“Wonder what this is doing here?” I ask, bending down to pick it up.
“I don’t know?” Levi says, watching as I toss the object from one hand to the other.
“What should we do with it?” I ask, handing it to Levi.
“It’s just a rock,” Levi responds, setting it back down in front of the door and kicking it so it rolls away from us. As the rock comes to a halt just past the wall of the church, Levi takes my hand, and we walk down the stairs together, toward the rising sun.